


this is to end in fire

by sharkfights (feartown)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/F, all lesbians all the time, giving away my totally lame playstyle to the internet, investing too much in video game characters, lady warriors, porn battles are the best kind of battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 09:26:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartown/pseuds/sharkfights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are dragons, there is war, and then there is Aela.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is to end in fire

**Author's Note:**

> For @oxoniensis's Porn Battle XV: Aela the Huntress/Mjoll the Lioness - beast, night, commonalities. I filled my own goddamn prompt bc I am disgustingly obsessed with Aela (every new playthrough I say "ok this time you're marrying someone else. Literally anyone else" but then... I do not) and actually find Mjoll and her incessant chatting incredibly endearing. Of course, I am a person who finds it endearing when Ingjard and Serana attempt to murder each other every time we're jammed up in a cave so... I'm probably not an authority on it.
> 
> Anyway, I'm still a little shaky with my prose at the moment - finally being able to write long sentences again makes me somewhat verbose and I like to abuse semicolons as often as possible, so I apologize in advance for that. I've also had a fair amount of beer today, if that means anything.

Dragons. Mjoll could still hear the roar deep in her ears from the last one that had flown over; the beat of its wings heavy above them before moving on.

It frightened her, as much as she hated to admit it. Some “Lioness” she was, when even the thought of a dragon had her sweating under her armour. It actually hurt a little, to remember her fearlessness – her younger self would have revelled in the chance to slay a dragon the way they did in the stories her father used to tell her. But now, after everything, she felt more like an anxious cub.

She checked her horse’s girth and watched the Dragonborn finish rolling her tent. She was strange; a scrappy little Redguard who looked nothing like the strong, fearsome warriors she’d always seen from Hammerfell; who came back from Mzinchaleft bruised and bleeding and triumphantly holding out her beloved Grimsever like she couldn’t believe it herself.

Instinctively, Mjoll’s hand found the hilt of the sword at her hip, the leather soft and familiar under her fingers. She had pledged herself to the dark-skinned girl on the spot after that day, and Daja had accepted, buying her a horse straight out of Riften and welcoming her into her merry band of warrior women like it was nothing out of the ordinary.

And truly, the girl didn’t seem to realize how extraordinary it was – there were the priestesses of Dibella in Markarth, of course, and she had known hunters to expedition together without male companions, but she had never been privy to a group of all-female vigilantes before.

Of the two other women travelling with Daja, she only knew one. Aela the Huntress was almost as notorious as the Dragonborn, and it was no secret that she had been travelling with her since the news of her existence broke out of Whiterun.

Aela was younger than Mjoll only by a short number of years, but her cat-like grace and her odd choice of attire made her seem far more youthful, beautiful, in comparison. Mjoll had never thought of herself as beautiful, particularly; she was strong and proud and felt handsome in her armour; but never the kind of primitive beauty that Aela with her copper hair and impossibly quick bow arm conjured up.

It was almost funny how much more flustered Mjoll was around Aela than Daja. It wasn’t that the Dragonborn wasn’t impressive – Mjoll had been breathtaken the first time she saw her finish off a dragon; she’d been shaking and on the verge of collapse when in front of her, Daja had Shouted with the force of a roar, the echo of it riding up her spine like a current. But Aela was different, infamous rather than venerated, and she had an oddness about her that Mjoll couldn’t quite figure out.

“Ready to move?” Daja asked, untying her horse and swinging herself onto him.

Mjoll nodded and heard Aela’s voice, brassy and deep, from behind her, “Let’s get going.”

Mjoll mounted up onto her own horse, the clever grey gelding she’d seen often on walks in and out of Riften and had grown fond of even before she’d been given him so thoughtfully. She’d named him Banner, though she had tried to be nonchalant about how pleased she’d felt with the choice, as her father had always told her to never get attached to a war horse, for one never knew how long they would last. She gave the horse’s sturdy shoulder a pat, cheerless at the thought of having to leave him behind in a short while, but she knew they were travelling back to the gloomy hollows of Sky Haven Temple – and the valleys of the Reach were no place for unattended horses.

Annekke, the other member of their group, slung the last of her saddlebags over her dusty brown horse’s back and secured them in place before settling in her saddle. A miner, Annekke was as sweet and hardy as her horse, and in possession of only a pickaxe as a weapon when they’d met her in Darkwater Crossing, Daja had told her. She was a seasoned adventurer though, and a warm, charming counterpoint to Aela’s wolfish loner. Mjoll liked her.

So, packed and secure, they set off over the tussocky plain, and having camped just outside Rorikstead the night before they came upon the town quickly, passing through with a nod to the guards. Then they continued west for a good hour, coming down a rocky slope into Old Hroldan just as the sun was getting high.

They met with friends of Delphine’s: two burly ex-guards and the innkeep who were to look after the horses while the women carried on over the river and through Karthspire.

“Think there’s a troop down there,” one of the guards said gruffly, taking the reins of the Dragonborn’s pale horse.

“In the camp?” Daja asked, a note of concern in her voice.

“Just foragers from what I saw – no hagraven, no mages. Might even be gone by now.”

“Thanks, Halmar.”

Mjoll handed her horse over to Eydis, the woman who owned the inn. She smiled. “He’ll be fine, dear. We don’t run into much trouble here. Haven’t seen even a glimpse of a _bandit_ since Mid Year.”

“Come on, lion-woman, the sooner Daja manages to leech what she needs out of the old man the sooner you can get back to your steed,” Aela said from near her shoulder. Her voice dug into the space around her heart, heating something behind her cheeks and low in her belly.

Not wanting to look soft in front of the Companion, she stepped away from Banner and let out a breath.

“Just be grateful she didn’t decide we needed to go to High Hrothgar. I’d gladly never make that journey again.”

 

 

 

 

Not long after leaving Old Hroldan, they crossed the shallow part of the river before the Karthspire camp and stopped. Aela went ahead and looked over the rise with her eagle eyes, bow loose in one hand.

Mjoll watched her slink over the rocks, steady and graceful, and waited as she poised her bow, arrow perfectly balanced between her fingers. She heard the _thwoop_ and swish of the first arrow, and in a blink the second, pulled from Aela’s quiver in one smooth motion. She came back down the hill.

“Three left, as far as I can tell. They’re just foragers, like Halmar said; looks like they’re rebuilding from the damage they took last time we were here.”

“Easy enough,” Daja said, and let Aela take the lead on the way back up to the camp.

Mjoll stepped over the body of the first man Aela had downed, the arrow sticking straight out of his heart. Without thinking, she gripped it and twisted it out of him, the first few inches dark with blood. She wiped it on her leggings and exchanged it for Grimsever, letting the arrow drop into her scabbard. She didn’t know why she’d been compelled to pick it up, Aela had a great many arrows and was perfectly capable at fashioning more, but thankfully she couldn’t think any more about it because the Forsworn were on them – five, not three as Aela had thought.

Aela took down the one below them, clearing the way, and the Dragonborn with a quick slash from her dual swords vanquished the second and third.

Brandishing Grimsever, Mjoll saw that Daja and Annekke were advancing on the fourth Forsworn so she took the remaining one, a wild-looking Reachman with a bare chest and an ugly scar spanning the breadth of his skull.

She swung at him, a wide whooshing cut that should have connected heavily with his ribs – if he hadn’t sunk to his knees right in front of her. Instead, she hit him in the shoulder, almost completely severing his arm from his body, then pulled the sword out and let him gurgle at her feet. An arrow protruded from his back.

Ahead of her, Aela smiled almost sheepishly as she lowered her bow.

 

 

 

 

By the time they’d burned the bodies, then finally reached the temple and pushed open the heavy doors, it was close to dusk, and Mjoll knew Esbern wouldn’t divulge what Daja needed to know until morning.

Delphine greeted them with bread and mead, some bowls of pheasant stew and news of her efforts in reaching out to potential recruits for the Blades.

It was still strange to see the innkeeper in armour; she had been to Riverwood several times before and had no inkling of what might lie under her reserved persona. She reminded herself to tell Aerin of it when – if – she returned home to Riften.

After eating and talking, Delphine wanted a moment alone with Daja and Esbern, so Mjoll headed up the stairs and out to the courtyard to pitch her tent on the grass, underneath one of the juniper trees. She didn’t like sleeping inside, not when the stars were out and there was a warmth in the air. She had spent so much time recovering in Aerin’s tiny house – haunted by so many dreams of being stuck underground, the threat of hot steam on her back – that any chance to be outside was worth taking. And up here, so far from the fog of Riften, she felt like the sky was close enough to touch. If she looked north, she could just make out the Aurora.

Not long after she’d made a small fire to keep the early chill off and discarded her armour, she heard a door creak open.

For a moment she thought it was Annekke – or ridiculously, a Forsworn – but then she saw a flash of chestnut and knew it was Aela.

“Are you all right?” Mjoll asked, because it wasn’t normal for the Companion to stray far from the Dragonborn.

“By the gods that man can talk,” Aela said, not answering the question. “Daja is going to be in there all night.”

“Where’s Annekke?”

“Sleeping. There _are_ beds down there you know. And they’re not made of stone, like the ground you’re attempting to camp on.”

There was teasing in Aela’s pale gaze, something Mjoll was unaccustomed to. It made her uncomfortably warm.

“The sky is beautiful out here though, don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

Aela prodded a burning branch with the toe of her boot and sat down, a bare knee brushing Mjoll’s.

“So listen, I’m sorry for taking out your mark earlier. I’ve been… restless, these last few days and I haven’t been thinking as sharply as I should.”

“You were just trying to help.”

“No, it was reckless. If I’d missed, I could have hit you. If I’d hit you I…”

Aela trailed off significantly, and Mjoll thought she might have continued, but the silence stretched.

“It would have been an inconvenience for Daja,” Mjoll said, and she couldn’t help but smile when Aela looked at her with amused surprise. Mjoll didn’t usually jest, it wasn’t in her nature, but some of Aela’s mood was rubbing off on her.

“Well, you’re certainly better at melee combat than I am. I can’t swing a sword for goat’s hide, so she’d definitely miss you.”

“Hell of a lot of good that is when there’s a hundred men on you – better picking them off from afar if you ask me.”

Suddenly reminded, Mjoll leaned over to find her knapsack. She’d stashed the recovered arrow in it after the fight, and now she took it out and handed it to Aela. The ebony head glinted in the firelight, strangely malicious.

“I don’t know why I took it back,” Mjoll admitted.

Aela shrugged. “My mother always told me you can never have too many arrows.” She flicked it deftly between her fingers, an indecipherable expression on her face as she looked into the fire.

Mjoll remembered Aela saying her mother had been a Companion, stated with the quiet worship Mjoll so often heard in her own voice when speaking of family. She had more in common with the coarse Huntress the more she thought about it, so why did it feel so strange for Aela to be sitting next to her?

“Do you miss Whiterun?” Mjoll asked, trying to fill the encumbered silence.

“Sometimes. Jorrvaskr is not a home, or at least, it’s not my home, but it has significance to me. And I like the hold, for all its tussock and smoke.”

“Where would you live, though, if you had the choice?”

Aela thought for a moment. “Falkreath, probably. It suits me, despite the rain, and the hunt is good there.”

“It’s been years since I’ve walked the forests of Falkreath,” Mjoll said, remembering how green and close everything felt there; a perpetual humidity permeating every nook beneath the wide canopy of trees. She could see Aela in those forests, sunlight dappled across her shoulders and the bare curve of her back; outside a log cabin, maybe. She was right, it suited her.

“Where would you live, if not Riften?” Aela asked. “Better question, why on the Eights’ green earth do you live in Riften to begin with?”

Aela leaned back, behind Mjoll, and found her knapsack. Mjoll paid her no heed; she had no qualms about letting the Companion into her things. Aela located two bottles of ale, and pulled the corks out of them before handing one off to Mjoll.

Mjoll watched her take a long drink, her mouth dry, and realized Aela was waiting for her reply.

“I owe Riften a debt,” she said.

Aela’s eyes were hard; her words the tenor of stone. “You owe that city _nothing_.”

It was oddly vehement for someone who claimed to care very little about those not from her clan, and the surprise must have shown on Mjoll’s face, because Aela softened.

“Look,” she started, wiping the edge of her mouth with her thumb, “I see the guilt you carried out of that hovel, Mjoll, and you wear it under your armor every day like you deserve it. I’ve spent enough time in Riften myself to know that it is a place of irrevocable corruption, and all it’s capable of doing is dragging you down into the same cesspool its people reside in. You would burn for that city, but it wouldn’t mourn you.”

Mjoll didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Aela use her actual name before, and it made her voice catch in her throat.

“You haven’t abandoned a child in leaving,” Aela continued, “You’ve shed a poisonous cloak too far past cleansing, and now you’re free to pursue something far more worthwhile. You should feel good about it.”

She knew, in her heart, that Aela was right. And there _was_ something – someone – far more worthy of pursuit than trying to mend Riften’s broken bones, but guilt was a hard demon for her to shake. “Riften took me in despite my feelings, and lets me stay to this day. Is that worth nothing?”

Aela took another swig of her ale. “Why should you feel a responsibility because your feelings have been considered? Is that not your right as a decent human being? What if someone else had taken you in – someone from a peaceful, non-political hold? Some--”

“Someone like you?” Mjoll asked, before she could stop herself. She thought of waking groggily to Aela’s face above her rather than Aerin’s; Aela dressing her wounds and reading at the end of her bed every day, slowly restoring her health to its former glory.

Aela set her bottle down. “Why not? You’re a great fighter; the Companions would have welcomed you. You could have worn honor on your skin, rather than this rash of shame.”

“I have honor.”

“Yes. But to look at you I wouldn’t know that. I see glimpses when I watch you with your sword, but otherwise you hide it, the way you hide most things.”

“You aren’t what I’d call forthcoming either,” Mjoll said, heat in her tone.

The Huntress shrugged. “I tell people things when they ask.”

“As do I,” Mjoll replied, almost annoyed at what Aela seemingly didn’t understand.

But then there was a crooked grin when she replied, and Mjoll realized she’d been fooled. “So what you’re saying is, we’re very similar people.”

“Well—”

Aela cut her off. “Good,” she said, and kissed her.

Startled, Mjoll froze, but Aela didn’t pull back. Mjoll cautiously let herself relax, her mouth opening, and she tasted Aela’s tongue: warm and bitter and responsible for sending a jolt straight down to the lowest reaches of her belly.

Aela’s hands dug into her hair, her touch rough and hot, and Mjoll ran a hand over Aela’s shoulder, down her chest and across her ribs; searching. She didn’t know what to do, not even entirely sure Aela was real. Had she fallen asleep, slipped quietly into a dream?

Not remotely concerned, Aela pushed her back towards her tent, crawling over the top of her when they reached Mjoll’s bedroll to straddle her hips and rear up above her.

For all Aela’s distance she wasn’t shy, and it held true now as she undid all her scraps of armor and discarded them, silhouetted so completely by the fire behind her she could have been on fire herself.

Mjoll drew in a breath, taking in Aela’s breasts, the pale skin marred by scars and bruises, the copper hair between her thighs. She was truly beautiful.

Her skin was gritty with dirt and smoke where Mjoll had her fingers, gripping just above the sharp jut of her hips, and they felt calloused against the softness shifting beneath them. Leaning down, Aela took Mjoll’s lip between her teeth, and Mjoll felt the faintest growl ripple through the both of them. Aela’s hands deftly undid the string of her tunic, and she ran her palms over Mjoll’s trembling chest, surprisingly gentle.

Mjoll felt like she might start burning from the inside out. Aela’s hands journeyed down, her spine curving toward Mjoll as her fingers found their way beneath her leggings, leaving what felt like a trail of fire in their wake.

When Aela’s fingers slid through the wet heat between her legs, Mjoll gasped, and her back arched as two fingers slipped inside her, thunder starting to erupt in her ears.

She felt Aela’s breath at her ear. “Can you hear them?” she murmured, her voice a deep hum.

Mjoll didn’t know what she meant, too caught up in the rhythm of Aela’s stroking fingers, her breasts beneath her shaking hands.

Aela went still, her gaze fixed on Mjoll’s. For a moment, it was quiet but for their breathing. Then she knew what Aela had been speaking of.

From the west, echoing around the mountains, a dragon bellowed with a hoarse roar, and another hollered its reply.

Mjoll shivered from head to toe, filled with the sound as though it were directly above them. They roared again – whether in conversation or anger, it was impossible to tell – fraught with power, and it was thrilling.

So then, alive with dragon language the way she thought the Dragonborn must be, Mjoll pulled Aela’s face down to hers with fervour, eliciting a growl as real and primal as Aela herself.

Her hands pulled at Aela’s tawny hair, and the Companion’s fingers started thrusting with renewed ardency as she delved her tongue into Mjoll’s mouth. It was as though she were trying to imbue her with the fearlessness of the beasts above them and the fearlessness she felt in her own heart, and Mjoll was overcome with it.

She looked at Aela, and for a second it was as though she was looking at something inhuman, something wild and merciless – but when she blinked it was gone, replaced by Aela’s bright, familiar gaze above her, calculated and scrutinizing.

“Let go,” she said, curling her fingers, and Mjoll came apart with a cry.

Apparently satisfied, Aela wiped her fingers on the fur of the bedroll, and with her other hand wiped away a stray tear Mjoll hadn’t realized she’d shed.

Mjoll, still panting, took Aela’s retreating hand in hers, and kissed her palm in a gesture of thanks. In reply, Aela gave her a shadow of a wink, then shifted her weight off the woman underneath her.

Finding a spare tunic just inside the mouth of the tent, Aela slung it over her bare skin and sat back down to look out at the moon hanging over their camp. Mjoll sat up and joined her, peaceful for the first time in too long.

The wind sighed, and above them, the stars winked and bled.

 

 

Across the valley, the dragons called.

**Author's Note:**

> If, by a miracle, you have any interest in my writing beyond lesbian fantasy porn (why would you tho) I'm not far away from posting the first five chapters of a novel here: http://groundbeefnovel.wordpress.com/about/ and if you wanted to check it out that would be.... I'm struggling to find a better word than "cool". Which is obviously a good indicator of my natural writing ability; I'm definitely convincing you to check it out with that kind of skill, right???


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